Clarification of HTTP Delete rules

in https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-9.7 it says:

   The DELETE method requests that the origin server delete the resource
   identified by the Request-URI.


So you can issue DELETE /document/by/id which deletes a resource.

But can you legally do this?

DELETE /document?param=some value

where multiple entities that can get a subject of a GET request
individually can be deleted - whatever match the query parameters. Are the
words "the resource" meant to exclude this use or not?

thanks
Grahame


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